Gaining the good stuff as I lose the bad.

Month: August 2015

It’s hard to imagine, and it’s hard to believe, but the world is a lot happier of a place today than it was at this time last week.

the AC in the house is fine. The actual out of pocket to fix it was 170, which also buys us a regular check-up of the system for the next year. This could have gone far worse.

the dryer is fine, the entire dryer debacle was apparently a false alarm.

I got a new writing gig! Actual real research and writing that people will read and care about to the tune of about a thousand a month, more than I have been making for most months lately.

the husband is getting a promotion in the next month or two. They’ve told him what they want from him, he can do it, and this promotion comes with a move towards the office that only takes 15 minutes to commute to/from. The current office is more like 45 minutes and can be up to an hour on a bad day. The new office is ALSO en route to/from the kid’s schools, so if his car dies (an inevitability) we can buy ourselves time with that commute. Presumably this promotion would also come with a raise.

the house purge has resulted in some things that can be sold and we’re already getting a couple of bites on ebay.

the kids are in school, and the meet the teacher nights went without issue and in fact, at the middle school orientation the ex-husband looked like the nutjob instead of me for once. WINNER.

I’ve already delivered my first project for the new gig and it was accepted and loved. Apparently, I’m cooler than I thought I was.

Normally, you know, these kinds of things make me crazy and I think about crying. But this time, I couldn’t help laughing. It’s almost impossible for anything else to go wrong at this point, really. But then, I’ve said it before.

Saturday morning I thought the house felt a little warm but assumed that it was the husband’s usual return volley to my attempt to get the house as cool as I like it. Clearly, my ancestors were from a much colder climate region because I should probably live in a place where it never gets above 80 degrees.

By the afternoon, I knew it was too hot. The thermostat indicated that the house was over 85 degrees and I was right to think it was boiling. I thought maybe the thermostat just needed new batteries but no, that’s not it. The husband started fussing with it and the short version is it’s not right. He can force it to cool, but it’ll stop cooling after a while and just go to fan.

We might need new air conditioner or air conditioner repair. There’s a chance the extended warranty the previous owner bought is still in effect and it’s covered. There’s a possibility that the alarm company can replace part of it, since the thermostat is tied to the alarm system but that’s a long shot.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent a substantial part of this weekend sweating.

And the dryer is not right, either. Apparently, there are springs inside the dryer that hold the drum in place. And one of the springs is broken. Maybe. It’s hard to say, apparently, since some of the time the dryer is working fine and other times it makes weird sounds and may or may not destroy itself. We have no potential get out of jail free card on that one, unlike the air conditioner.

And yet, all I could do is laugh. Either my therapy is going super well and I’m doing a much better job of handling stress, or I’ve finally snapped. I’m working on the theory it’s the first one.

I’ve maintained my solid work streak and cleaning streak and the purge is nearly complete. This is a major life improvement for me, and I’m proud of myself. The kitchen and the laundry room purges were completed this weekend, and I only have one box of my own things to sort through, plus five boxes of the kids’ old school papers to sort out and file, and that’s about it.

The husband has a harder row to hoe. He has more like ten boxes of his old stuff to sort through, but most of that is duplicate housewares and will end up being donated to Goodwill. I think we are less than a week out from having it all completely done and the house will finally be as empty as I want it.

Of course, it won’t be finished until we can buy all the things we need to get the house finished. We need new storage for the DVD collection, for example. And two of the bedrooms need painting badly. But I have hope that with my newly increased workload, I will be able to start buying those items incrementally.

Thus, despite the ridiculous heat (I’m typing this under a ceiling fan and in front of another fan and still sweating) I am cautiously optimistic about my future.

My long absence is due to the fact that I had the kids for the entire month of July. After the misery and unhappiness of being without them the entire month of June, it was so good to have them home.

We couldn’t go on vacation to Colorado as we had planned, because the car issues from the spring sapped our money and the husband’s vacation time, so instead we did a lot of things around town. We went to as many parks as we could find, explored a wide range of public pools and swimming spots, explored all the free summer shows and programs at local libraries, parks and museums.

The good news, beyond how much fun we had, is that I was insanely functional and productive. I was out of the house greater than 90 percent of the days, but I did all the dishes, all the laundry and all but about five meals for the entire month. Prior to July, I wasn’t even doing the dishes/laundry/dinners.

The bad news is, the husband doesn’t appear to be as excited as I am about the progress I made. It’s really upsetting me.

In other good news, I am now completely done with the dental work. It’s all done and I feel good. I’ve set an appointment with the obstetrician for the first of September, where we will remove the IUD and see if I can continue the Wellbutrin or if I have to taper off it.